Through the Internet and other networks, users have gained access to large amounts of information distributed over a large number of computers. In order to access the vast amounts of information, users typically implement a user browser to access a search engine. The search engine responds to an input user query by returning one or more sources of information available over the Internet or other network.
Currently, when implementing a search engine, a user enters one or more keywords and receives a set of results. Depending upon the particular terms entered by a user, the search engine produces a particular number of results. During its search, the search engine typically implements a crawler to access a plurality of websites and stores references to those websites in an index. The references in the index may be categorized based on one or more keywords. When responding to a user query, the search engine may first traverse the index in order to locate the input query terms. Typically, the search engine displays the results in an order based on perceived relevance.
For the user, evaluating and sorting though the results returned can be an extremely arduous task, particularly as the number of results increases. The relevance as determined by the search engine may not adequately address a user's query. For instance, a user may enter a query including the name of a particular product. The search engine does not know whether the user is looking for information about the product, feedback on the product, or for the opportunity to purchase the product over the Internet. Users may simply want to know whether those who have purchased a product have a positive opinion of the product. In such cases, users typically must visit multiple sites and waste time determining which results contain desirable information.
Although web sites are available that collect opinions, these websites often fail to provide the user with desired information in an efficient manner. Furthermore, these websites do not gather information from all possible sources available over the network. Rather, these websites frequently link to other sites rather than providing all necessary information in one location. Furthermore, prior research exists that enables creation of a list of attributes and subsequent classification of documents based on the list contents. However, this technology has not been implemented for grouping web sites by attribute based on search engine traversal. Accordingly, a solution is needed that groups results by useful attributes based on a query type. Furthermore, a solution is needed that will enable users to view positive and negative attributes of a product are service as evaluated by other users.